Thursday, December 4, 2008

Picture of my frozen egg

Here is an actual egg from my retrieval. (the whole thing is the egg and the spot is the nucleus). Life is a pretty crazy thing. This egg was inside me (in a premature state) for 32 years - even before I took my own first breath as a newborn. Had I not had the retrieval, this egg would have just never developed and died off last month - just another one of the many millions that die off over a woman's lifetime. Instead, through modern medicine, it was able to be matured and extracted and it is now quite literally frozen in time alongside 27 others, potentially to be the starting building block of a future human being. And this egg is what is fully sufficient and necessary to make that human my biological child. This is the tie - the everything and anything that is what a woman prefers when she wants "her own" biological baby. Whatever it is that she wants - what I want - it's in there. Part of me is in there.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience and journey with us. I feel a bit at ease after reading your blog. I am in the process of freezing my eggs as well. Were you able to get the insurance company to cover the medication costs?

I'm responding to the anonymous #2..I think we did it on the same time period. I had them retrieved on Thursday and am waiting for my period. Reading eggfreezer's experience on her period I'm very scared. Did you have a lot of pain too during your 1-3 days?

I'm already taking 1500mg of pain killers and used to have painful period cramps on normal periods.

To Anonymous #3.. I did have pain on Day 1-3, but not bad.. I was able to walk and returned to work on Day 2. My period came on 15 days after the retrieval. How many eggs did they retrieved for you? I got 14 and am thinking if I should do cycle #2. My doctor said it is good to have at least 20-30. Thoughts?

to DAI - NYU freezes half one way and half the other way. They say there is inconclusive evidence which is better, and they hedge their bets by splitting the methods over the retrieval. I didn't really have a choice, nor did I try to make one. I trusted that they have a vested interest in the success rates, so went along with the plan.

oh come on. that is a totally airbrushed egg. no egg could possibly be that cute -- glad you are all done and it went well, i have 30 in a fridge in montreal myself. i think the operative word is 'phew.' --all the best :)

thanks for sharing your experience. i am a 35-year old from london. just had my initial consultation about egg-freezing at a fertility clinic this morning. was apprehensive about whether i should start this process at all until i found your blog on the net. read all your entries in one sitting, now i can't wait to get my very own picture of one of my frozen eggs too. hope i get as many eggs as you did with one cycle of treatment. work is too big a part of my life and this i hope is my way of saying i didn't 'forget' to have kids.

Hi, I don't know if you still check this blog, but I just wanted to thank you for writing this. I found the information so, so helpful and so much more detailed than what even my clinic/doctor provided, including about the shots and the ideal levels of hormones and antral follicle count. I just had my retrieval this morning (24 eggs) and am contemplating everything--hopefully it will work out.

Again, thank you--what you have done is a public service about a topic very few people know about, much less talk about.